PCs may seem easy to upgrade, but it’s also easy to get the upgrades wrong. Add a bit more RAM and a faster processor and you’ll be set for the next five years, right? Maybe. Or it may have no noticeable effect. It may not even work at all.

Every PC upgrade is different, so a little knowledge and planning can ensure that everything goes smoothly.

1. Why Are You Upgrading?

Before you even contemplate an upgrade, you need to be clear on exactly what it is you hope to achieve. If you only have a vague idea that you want to “make your PC faster”, there’s a good chance you’ll end up disappointed. It’s easy to splash out money on something that won’t even address your problem.

Processor, memory, storage, and graphics card upgrades can all make your PC faster — or at least appear faster — but you cannot just pick one at random and assume it will have the desired effect.

So what exactly is the issue you want to deal with? Do your programs take too long to launch? Is the frame rate in your games too low? Does the PC lag when you’re working in multiple apps? Has it started getting hot and/or noisy? Each of those questions can be solved by upgrading a different part.

Don’t overlook the hardware environment either. Clearing out dust from around your PC’s air vents will prevent overheating and should help to reduce fan noise.

Second, there’s the question of whether your computer is still worth spending money on. Modest upgrades, which are both affordable and easy to implement (like adding extra RAM) might be worthwhile even on older systems.

But if you’re contemplating something bigger (like replacing the CPU) then you might want to consider whether you’d be better served with a brand new computer. A PC is only as good as its worst performing part. Upgrading a single component may solve your problem, or it may just expose another bottleneck elsewhere.

You can narrow down your options by considering examples of where each piece of hardware will have its biggest impact.

RAM might help if switching between different programs is slow, browsers grind to a halt with lots of tabs open, you have input lag, the system becomes unresponsive, or large programs like Photoshop and Lightroom are slow.

Hard Drive might help if loading games and applications is really slow, it takes a long time to save or unzip large files, booting up takes a long time, or the hard drive becomes noisy when RAM is limited.

CPU might help if video or audio files are slow to encode, you have reduced performance when multitasking applications or games, you have input lag, or your current CPU regularly operates at high temperatures.

GPU might help if you have stuttering and dropped frames in games, an inability to play games at higher settings, or very high temperatures in your current GPU.

We can take, as a starting point, the fact that even the slowest SSD will be many times faster than an HDD, so if your issues are related to a slow hard drive, then upgrading to a solid state drive will always be beneficial. And given that operating systems use virtual memory, an SSD can even offset a lack of RAM to an extent.

You’ll only really need to upgrade the graphics card if you play recently-released AAA games. If you don’t, then the GPU you have will likely be more than good enough.

Identifying Bottlenecks

To find out if RAM or the processor are the bottlenecks in your system, you can use the built-in system monitoring utilities on your computer. In Windows 10, this means using the Task Manager, which you can access by pressing Ctrl-Shift-Del. In OS X, open the Activity Monitor app.

These tools give you a quick overview of the CPU load and RAM usage on your system. If you leave them running in the background temporarily, you can get a sense of whether your processor or memory are causing slowdowns. (Look for the processor running at 100% or the RAM being full.)

You can also discover any applications that are hogging your resources, too.

Remember that while your upgrades are meant to solve bottlenecks, they can also highlight other bottlenecks or introduce new ones.

For example, a simple external upgrade — like adding a 4K monitor — could require you to upgrade your graphics card to play games at 4K resolution. If you want to stream 4K video, you might need to upgrade your Internet connection.

4. Which Specifications Are Important?

Once you have identified what you want to update and why, you need to pick the right part for the job.

Second, they need to be compatible. A good place to check this is PCPartPicker, where you can find parts that are fully compatible with your motherboard. Sometimes it might say that a CPU/motherboard combination requires a BIOS update. In this case, either check that an update is available (it may not be) or find an alternative.

Third, they need to be supported. Motherboards only support RAM up to sticks of a certain capacity. So if it supports up to 8 GB RAM modules, and has two slots, then the maximum amount of RAM you can have is 16 GB.

And there are some other easy oversights, like buying a USB 3.0 external drive when you only have USB 2.0 ports available, or buying an 802.11ac router but only having 802.11n hardware in your PC. In both cases, your new hardware will only run at the slower speed of compatibility.

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Anonymous

February 7, 2016 at 10:19 pm

I run an elderly, 2005, Compaq Presario desktop (pre- the HP takeover, so much better quality components to start with), running 'Puppy' Linux.

It came with an Athlon 64 3200+ single-core, 1 GB of DDR1 RAM, a 160 GB WD Caviar 'Black HDD, and a generic, under-powered, 'silver-box' PSU.

I wanted to be able to multitask better. I got hold of a second-hand Athlon 64 X2 3800+ dual-core (like a pair of 3200's on the same die) for all of £7.20p! 4 GB of RAM set me back about £35; a 500 GB WD Caviar Blue SATA1 HDD was around the same, and a CoolerMaster B50 single-rail, 80+ rated PSU was about £30.

So for around £100, I now have a machine that'll last me several more years. The MSI mobo's caps are all Rubicons & Nichicons.....and even after 11 years are still tight to the board, with no signs of bulges or other problems. I regularly spring-clean every 3 months or so. And before anyone says it, no, I don't have a GPU; don't want, or need one. The onboard graphics are more than sufficient for my needs, and still give a clear, crisp image.

As far as I know (And I'm NO expert by ANY means!!) I've seen PC's that get a "mediocre" WEI score and still perform decently. I've also seen machines that get great WEI scores and then for some reason, whether it be hardware or software related, they start to perform worse than the ones with the mediocre scores....I guess you can only know after you've started to use the machine and have began accumulating ".tmp" files...or cookies etc. But that's just my opinion, I'm sure someone with more knowledge of this would be able to assist you better.

It really depends on what you do with your PC every day. My Windows index shows me that my graphics card is where the performance is the lowest. If I only looked at that figure, because that's what accounts for a low overall number, I'd have to bin my PC. BUT, I don't play games, I use the built in video on the motherboard. It plays movies perfectly. I don't look at the frame rate. Everything else is very good performance and the PC is top notch. I could bring the performance index up substantially, but I'm not going to spend hundreds of dollars on a high performance video card, since for me it would be a waste of money.

"Desktop Graphics" and "Gaming Graphics" will almost always be the low-number category for your Windows Experience Index unless you're already a gamer. If you're already a gamer and you already have a decent gaming card, but you probably want a better one anyway, and if you're not, you probably don't care.

Also, the experience index is hidden from users in Windows 8.1 and 10 (you can derive it from Powershell commands or third party tools if you really want to), so it might not be the best basis for decision making if you're upgrading OS as well.

Another funny thing about the Windows Experience Index: It's not actually all THAT accurate. I've seen half-point swings in score just depending on a PC's antivirus application being active or not. I'd say take the scores for anything less than a full point with a grain of salt.

My first rule of upgrading a PC is this: Get an SSD if you don't have one. That helps more than anything. I can't think of a single real-world computing task that isn't improved by having faster disk access. Get an M.2 SSD if your PC has a native slot for one. SSDs make computers awesome.

If you have less than 4GB RAM, get 4GB RAM. If you can't get 4GB RAM, get a computer that can have 4GB RAM. Do you need more than 4GB? Maybe. Get 8GB if you have an extra $50 sitting around. Do you need more than 8GB? Wait for something (Photoshop, Hyper-V, SQL Server, Chrome, whatever) to tell you that before you buy it. A lot of people still operate with the idea that more RAM is always better, but the truth is that most people don't have a use and won't see a subjective improvement from having 12 or 16GB+ as of this writing.

If you want or need to buy a new CPU, you're really at the point where you really need a whole new PC anyway. This is tragic in the case of a notebook; you really won't have any other option than to do that. On a desktop, it's probably at least technically possible to switch your CPU, but it probably won't make financial sense to do so unless you're already buying computer hardware on a monthly subscription.

I'm going to ask a question here, because I don't know the answer. Hopefully a MUO editor or commenter does.

Would the Windows Experience Index be a good source of information for this---or at least, point you in the right direction? The low numbers (since it breaks it down by hardware category) would be the first things to upgrade, right?

If so, there are a couple of free utilities that can give you this score for Windows 10.

Andy is a former print journalist and magazine editor who has been writing about technology for 15 years. In that time he has contributed to countless publications and produced copywriting work for large tech companies. He has also provided expert comment for the media and hosted panels at industry events.